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‘Super PAC’ to Raise Money for Liz Cheney’s Senate Bid

WASHINGTON — Supporters of Liz Cheney, whose campaign for a Senate seat in Wyoming got off to a rocky start, have created a “super PAC” to bolster her “name awareness and approval rating.” The group is hosting a high-dollar fund-raiser this week in Washington featuring her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, at a Georgetown restaurant, according to an emailed invitation.

Mr. Cheney will be the keynote speaker at a $10,000-per-couple dinner here on Thursday at Cafe Milano to benefit the newly formed Cowboy PAC, a group that aims “to begin a statewide advertising campaign in the very near future.”

“The goal is to get Liz Cheney to parity in name awareness and sentiment as soon as possible,” Sarah Atnipp, a Washington-based fund-raising consultant, wrote Tuesday in an email to Republican donors.

Super PACs are free to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money. Ms. Cheney, who is already airing television ads in Wyoming, is challenging Senator Michael B. Enzi in next year’s Republican primary.

Ms. Cheney spent much of her adult life in the Washington area, and she is trying to respond to charges of carpetbagging by emphasizing her Wyoming roots. But her recent move to the state is already threatening her campaign.

Mr. Enzi, who is running for his fourth term, is far better known in Wyoming than Ms. Cheney and is widely considered the front-runner.

Thursday night’s dinner highlights one of Ms. Cheney’s central challenges in trying to unseat the incumbent: She must be able to tap into her father’s ample Beltway fund-raising network, while overcoming suspicions that she is more Washington than Wyoming.

The fund-raiser comes just over a month after Mr. Cheney pointedly criticized Mr. Enzi for receiving much of his contributions from Washington lobbyists.

“Mike has a record, if you go back and review his finances, of getting about 84 percent of his campaign funds from Washington-based PACs,” Mr. Cheney said in late October on ABC’s “This Week.” “That’s more than any senator of either party. He doesn’t get much money from Wyoming.”

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The host of Thursday’s event is Red Cavaney, a longtime Washington lobbyist and friend of Mr. Cheney from their days working together in the White House under President Gerald R. Ford. Until Mr. Cavaney retired in 2008, he was the head of American Petroleum Institute, the primary trade group for the oil and gas industry.

Mr. Cheney has become a central figure in his eldest daughter’s campaign. When Ms. Cheney began her bid over the summer, she told associates that she wanted to win in her own right.

But she has plainly recognized what an asset her father can be in a Republican primary. And according to Republicans who have spoken to him, Mr. Cheney, his once-faltering health revived by a new heart, is consumed with helping her win.

He is hosting fund-raisers not just for the new super PAC but also for the campaign itself — he appeared with Ms. Cheney at a finance event in Denver last month.

And Ms. Cheney has not been shy about emphasizing their relationship. In each of her first two ads, she featured images of the former vice president. One of the commercials included one of her daughters referring by name to her famous grandfather.

Last month, when Ms. Cheney and her sister, Mary Cheney, a married lesbian, got into a public argument over same-sex marriage, Mr. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, issued a statement that offered support for Liz’s claim that she had never supported same-sex marriage rights.

As for the super PAC, Liz Cheney cannot, by law, coordinate with the group. But she has family ties with the operative running Cowboy PAC. According to a one-page memo sent along with the invitation, Cowboy PAC will be based in Cheyenne, Wyo, and managed by Barry Bennett.

Mr. Bennett is a Republican operative who has previously worked with Mary Cheney. The organization is still in its nascent stages, though, as the URL on the letterhead simply reads, “This website is currently under construction.”

Correction: December 3, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Senator Michael B. Enzi was running for his third term. He is seeking his fourth term.